When will the Senate hold a final vote?

Now that the Senate has voted to begin debate on the plan, the spotlight turns to the floor debate, which is limited to 20 hours, followed by a marathon series of amendment votes, a ritual known as a vote-a-rama.

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, had urged his colleagues to move forward with the bill.

“This is our chance to deliver relief for the people who’ve sent us here, and the way we can do that is by voting to proceed to the bill,” he said.

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Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, center, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, second from left, during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.Credit
Al Drago for The New York Times

Big changes could still happen in the coming days.

In a sign of things to come, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Lee, both Republicans, said on Wednesday they would propose an amendment to expand the child tax credit while providing a slightly smaller corporate tax cut than currently proposed.

“We have a chance to do better by working families in this tax bill,” they said in a joint statement.

While the Senate bill calls for dropping the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, from 35 percent, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Lee would set a rate of 22 percent.

A spokesman for the White House, Raj Shah, said the president would not support the change that Mr. Rubio and Mr. Lee want.

“We do support the child tax credit,” Mr. Shah told reporters ahead of Mr. Trump’s speech in Missouri. “We also think that it’s important to make businesses more competitive. We would not support raising the corporate rate as outlined in that amendment.”

More favorable treatment for pass-throughs are likely

Two Republican senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana, have been unhappy with how the Senate plan treats so-called pass-through businesses, whose profits are distributed to their owners and taxed at individual income tax rates.

The current Senate plan allows pass-through owners to deduct 17.4 percent of business income as a way of lowering their tax rates. But Republicans now plan to boost the deduction to 20 percent, people familiar with the matter said.

Before Wednesday’s vote, Mr. Daines said that he had “seen enough progress to vote yes to move the debate forward,” alluding to the larger deduction.

“There has been some good progress for Main Street businesses in the tax cut bill,” he wrote. “I was able to secure more than $60 billion in tax cuts for Main Street businesses.”

An uncommitted Republican says he’s on board.

Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, was a surprising holdout as his party worked to repeal the Affordable Care Act this year.

Now the goal is a tax overhaul, and Mr. Moran cautioned against adding to the debt as a result of the legislation.

But Mr. Moran said on Tuesday night that he supported the Senate plan.

“I expect to vote for the tax reform bill, but will continue to talk with my colleagues on ways to improve the legislation,” he said in a statement.

A new provision could trigger more fights.

The latest idea among deficit-conscious Republicans is to install a “trigger” in the bill that would cause taxes to rise if the anticipated revenue falls short.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a deficit hawk who threatened to vote against the bill, said he had gotten assurances that such a provision would be inserted.

This is shaping up to be the next big fight that Senate Republicans will face as some have bemoaned the concept as an automatic tax increase that ties their hands. The trigger is already proving to be a turnoff to conservative groups that have been pushing hard for tax cuts.

“A trigger that threatens tax hikes is a self-fulfilling threat to kill jobs,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group.

And Brent Gardner, the chief government affairs officer at the conservative activist group Americans for Prosperity, said such a plan would add complexity and uncertainty to the tax code that would stifle the economy.

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The Capitol in Washington. The Senate could hold a procedural vote to begin debate on taxes as soon as Wednesday afternoon, but nothing has been officially scheduled.Credit
Zach Gibson for The New York Times

The debate over a proposed “trigger” that would roll back tax cuts if revenues fall short of projections has shifted among Republican senators to a discussion over whether automatic discretionary spending cuts are the better way to go.

On Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that some of his colleagues saw cuts to nonmilitary programs as preferable to rolling back the tax cuts if they do not bring sufficient economic growth. He said that Republicans are divided on the idea of a trigger and what it would affect, but acknowledged that lawmakers were wrestling with the idea hours before an important procedural vote.

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“I would much prefer the idea of an automatic spending cut on the discretionary side,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Senator Bill Cassidy, the other Louisiana Republican, also appeared fond of the idea of using spending cuts as a safeguard in the bill.

“It’s intriguing isn’t it?” he said.

This is why overhauling taxes is so difficult: solving one problem often creates another.

President Trump talks taxes in Missouri

Mr. Trump went to Missouri today to tout his tax plan at a rally in St. Charles.

Mr. Trump said United States has “ a once in a lifetime opportunity to restore American prosperity and reclaim America’s destiny” but that “ in order to achieve this bright and glowing future, the Senate must pass tax cuts and bring Main Street roaring back to life.”

“Our focus is on helping the folks who work in the mailrooms and machine shops of America — the plumbers and the carpenters, the cops and the teachers, the truck drivers and the pipe fitters — all of the people who give their best each and every day to take care of their family and the country they love. It is not enough for the middle class to keep getting by — we want them to start getting ahead.”

After months of claiming that they believe in dynamic scoring, Senate Republicans may get such an analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation on Wednesday.

The committee said that it was working to release an assessment by late Wednesday that would show the economic effects of the proposed tax cuts and the additional revenue that could be generated from accelerated economic growth.

The analysis could be a last obstacle for Republican deficit hawks if it shows that the tax cuts would not, in fact, pay for themselves even with economic growth. Several Republicans dismissed that possibility on Tuesday, suggesting that they were confident that the plan would be revenue neutral or insisting that they did not want to get into hypotheticals before the release of the report.

Trump says tax overhaul will bring home $4 trillion; history suggests it will go to shareholders.

President Trump said on Tuesday that the tax bill will prompt trillions of dollars currently held offshore to come flooding back to the United States since it will allow companies to bring profits home, at greatly reduced tax rates.

American companies would no longer owe full taxes on overseas profits. Instead, they would pay taxes at a minimum rate of at least 10 percent on some types of foreign profits — compared with a new, lower rate on domestic earnings of 20 percent down from 35 percent.

Mr. Trump predicts “lots of good things are going to happen, including the bringing back to our country of — probably will end up being over $4 trillion — money offshore that’s stagnant that companies — they’re just not able to bring it back. So I think it’s going to be a number over $4 trillion.”

The American Jobs Creation Act provided a one-time tax break for companies that wanted to repatriate their offshore profits. Companies brought home $312 billion at a rate of just 5.25 percent. Although the break was intended to spur investment and hiring, a plethora of studies showed that companies responded by spending billions buying back their shares, lifting their stock prices, and didn’t expand their American work forces.

Pfizer, for example, brought home $37 billion at the reduced rates — and shed 10,000 workers. Hewlett-Packard repatriated more than $14 billion, while eliminating more than 14,000 jobs.

Economists agree a lower tax rate will incentivize companies to return money to the United States but it remains to be seen whether that translates into economic benefits.

Testifying before the Joint Economic Committee, Ms. Yellen said the Fed would welcome changes in fiscal policy that increased the capacity of the American economy, for example by encouraging increased business investment.

But she said that it was up to Congress and the White House to evaluate the details of proposed changes.

“Looking at the likely impact of the particular proposals that may be under consideration is something that we haven’t done carefully at the Federal Reserve,” she said.

Ms. Yellen also said that the Fed would evaluate changes in fiscal policy in deciding how quickly to raise interest rates. The Fed could seek to dampen the effects of tax cuts by raising rates more quickly.

Fed officials have drawn a careful distinction between changes that increase economic capacity, for example by encouraging business investment, and changes that provide a short-term sugar high, for example cuts in personal income taxes that are likely to increase spending.

The Fed estimates that the economy is already growing at something close to the maximum sustainable pace, so a short-term boost might simply drive up inflation.